The strolling actress! All her happiness in life was lost forever: honor,
family, wealth. She was driven from her house, stripped, dishonored. She
had undergone all possible humiliations and disasters. That did not
prevent her supping with a wonderful appetite and joyously holding her
own under Delobelle's jocose remarks concerning her vocation and her
future triumphs. She felt light-hearted and happy, fairly embarked for
the land of Bohemia, her true country. What more would happen to her? Of
how many ups and downs was her new, unforeseen, and whimsical existence
to consist? She thought about that as she fell asleep in Desiree's great
easy-chair; but she thought of her revenge, too--her cherished revenge
which she held in her hand, all ready for use, and so unerring, so
fierce!

CHAPTER XXII

THE NEW EMPLOYEE OF THE HOUSE OF FROMONT

It was broad daylight when Fromont Jeune awoke. All night long, between
the drama that was being enacted below him and the festivity in joyous
progress above, he slept with clenched fists, the deep sleep of complete
prostration like that of a condemned man on the eve of his execution or
of a defeated General on the night following his disaster; a sleep from
which one would wish never to awake, and in which, in the absence of all
sensation, one has a foretaste of death.

The bright light streaming through his curtains, made more dazzling by
the deep snow with which the garden and the surrounding roofs were
covered, recalled him to the consciousness of things as they were. He
felt a shock throughout his whole being, and, even before his mind began
to work, that vague impression of melancholy which misfortunes,
momentarily forgotten, leave in their place. All the familiar noises of
the factory, the dull throbbing of the machinery, were in full activity.
So the world still existed! and by slow degrees the idea of his own
responsibility awoke in him.

"To-day is the day," he said to himself, with an involuntary movement
toward the dark side of the room, as if he longed to bury himself anew in
his long sleep.

The factory bell rang, then other bells in the neighborhood, then the
Angelus.

"Noon! Already! How I have slept!"

He felt some little remorse and a great sense of relief at the thought
that the drama of settling-day had passed off without him. What had they
done downstairs? Why did they not call him?

He rose, drew the curtains aside, and saw Risler and Sigismond talki